Journalists are facing raids and terrorism charges in Ethiopia as the media denounces a renewed “climate of fear” ahead of elections next year. There had been hopes for greater press freedom after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power in 2018, with exiled journalists encouraged to return.
However, a brutal war in the Tigray region from 2020 to 2022, and ongoing insurgencies in the Amhara and Oromia regions have led to those freedoms being once again harshly curtailed.
Last month, three employees of Addis Standard, an online newspaper, were detained for several hours for unknown reasons following a police raid on their offices. Six laptops and eight phones were seized and have still not been returned.
Photo: Reuters
In March, seven journalists from the private Ethiopian Broadcasting Service were arrested in a terrorism investigation after the broadcast of a documentary in which a woman claimed to have been raped by men in military uniform. The woman later retracted her statements and the station apologized, but that was not accepted by the authorities.
On April 23, a journalist for The Reporter newspaper, who was investigating the grievances of dismissed former military personnel seeking financial compensation, was arrested.
Last month also saw parliament pass an amendment to the press freedom law, putting oversight powers in the hands of the prime minister’s office rather than the semi-independent media association.
“The current situation for journalists in Ethiopia is more dire than ever,” said Tesfa, a journalist who has worked in the east African country for 10 years. Like other journalists interviewed by AFP, he gave a false name for fear of repercussions by the security agencies, describing a widespread “climate of fear”.
After the Addis Standard raid, Admasu, who works for a private media outlet, said he deleted messages on WhatsApp and social media.
“I realized it was time to think twice before doing anything that might land me in jail for no reason,” he said.
On Saturday last week, World Press Freedom Day, 14 diplomatic missions in Ethiopia, including the UK, Belgium and France, issued a statement deploring the fact that “freedom of expression continues to be subject to significant pressure.”
Some of the toughest restrictions are around access to Oromia and Amhara, the insurgency-hit regions that are Ethiopia’s most populous, with more than 60 million people between them.
Millions of children are deprived of schooling, and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the violence, but reporters are rarely granted access.
France-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) put Ethiopia 145th out of 180 countries in its latest press freedom ranking.
Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his temporary rapprochement with neighboring Eritrea, had opened up the media space for a while, it said.
Ethiopia was “more open and pluralistic than under the previous regime, and more than 200 once-banned media outlets are now authorized,” it added, but the government was now moving to “retake control of the information space.”
Sadibou Marong, director of RSF’s sub-Saharan Africa bureau, said the “recent attacks on press freedom... are weakening an already precarious situation”, with journalists facing “long detentions” and being forced into self-censorship.
Local reporters fear the situation would only get worse.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed